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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Dave Specter

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago guitarist Dave Specter. Enjoy!

^{Dave Specter - The Times They Are Deranging (The Buck Stops Where?)}

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."

-- Blaise Pascal

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News and Opinion

Wow, there's some stiff competition there ...

Mike Huckabee Is The Most Evil Person In The Trump Administration

There are some truly psychopathic ghouls in the Trump administration, including Trump himself, but as of today I am convinced that US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee is the absolute worst of them.

As Israeli officials become more open about their plans for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip while the Macklemore controversy refocuses public attention on the abuses of Zionism, pro-Israel spinmeisters in both the mass media and the US government are falling all over themselves trying to regain control of the narrative.

During a frenzied ejaculation of propaganda on Newsmax about Macklemore and the pro-Palestine movement, Huckabee repeated long-discredited atrocity propaganda about the October 7 Hamas attack to explain why nobody should oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza.

“These are the people that raped women in front of their own children,” Huckabee told Newsmax host Rob Schmitt. “That hacked off their genitals in front of their families. That lit elderly people on fire and burned them to death while they sat in wheelchairs. That did unspeakable things to children. That cut the heads off of babies and put other babies in an oven while they were alive. Now anyone who cheers that, they’re not just sick, they’re psychopathic.”

“Now if anybody says well that stuff didn’t really happen, well, we know it did, Rob, because Hamas taped themselves doing it. We have it on video,” Huckabee claimed.

To be clear, every single thing Huckabee says here is a lie. The claims about beheaded babies and infants cooked in ovens were soundly debunked in 2023, including in the Israeli press. There is zero video footage anywhere of any of the atrocities Huckabee describes. Israel apologists often make up all kinds of false claims about the video footage recorded on October 7 by Hamas GoPro cameras, trusting that the average member of the public will be too squeamish to watch the violent footage for themselves, but I assure you if you care to dive down that video rabbit hole you will find zero evidence of any of the acts Huckabee just listed.

It’s hard to find words to describe how evil this is. Huckabee knows he’s lying when he says these things. He’s 100 percent aware that he’s advancing atrocity propaganda to justify further Israeli atrocities.

When Huckabee first repeated these claims in October and November 2023 you could say maybe he didn’t know he was spreading atrocity propaganda because it took a few weeks for mainstream outlets to debunk the claim and for awareness of its inaccuracy to spread into mainstream discourse.

When he repeated the claim in September 2025, you could argue that PERHAPS Huckabee was just living in a tightly insulated Zionist echo chamber and was somehow still unaware that the claim had been comprehensively disproven.

Mike Huckabee claims on Oct 7th there was “the beheading of babies in the presence of their mothers”

This did not happen - but babies were beheaded in Gaza by Israeli bombs, you can see it on your phone. Huckabee will never mention this, let alone mourn for the children of Gaza

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) May 2, 2026

But as he repeats this claim in May and again September of 2026, after being widely and repeatedly decried for spreading lies and atrocity propaganda, he is indisputably looking the world in the eye and lying to our faces with full and complete knowledge of what he is doing.

Which shows you that he’s been knowingly lying this entire time. This is a Trump-appointed US government official knowingly lying to the public so they will continue to support Israel’s US-backed abuses of the Palestinian people.

Think about how fucked up you’d have to be inside to do something like this. And this freak has the gall to call Palestine supporters “psychopathic”.

In that same deceitful, propagandistic Newsmax interview, Rob Schmitt said it’s actually the opponents of genocide who are falling victim to propaganda.

“It’s amazing how effective propaganda can be, how blinding it can be to what you would think would be otherwise reasonable people,” Schmitt told Huckabee, adding, “I hate to say this but it feels like the Islamist crowd is winning this war of propaganda. It feels to me now that there is more of an anger and a fury towards Israel than there is towards the heinous things that we saw on October seventh.”

Right, so, according to Trump’s henchmen in his administration and in the right wing press, long-debunked atrocity propaganda about Palestinians is actually true, and it’s actually the people who think Israel is committing criminal acts who are propagandized, and it’s actually the people opposing genocide who are the psychopaths. Up is down, night is day. War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.

The western world is ruled by lying, manipulative criminals. Revolution can’t come soon enough.

Ukraine + Iran War Blowback is Exploding /John Mearsheimer

Iran school bombing: grounds to believe US was behind atrocity, UN finds

A UN fact-finding mission has determined there are reasonable grounds to believe the US was behind military strikes on a school and a sports facility in Iran in ⁠February that killed 120 children, and that these constituted war ⁠crimes.

The school strike, which killed 156 civilians including 120 children, involved a US Tomahawk missile that collapsed the roof of the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school, which the UN said was “clearly identifiable”, in Minab, Hormozgan province, on 28 February.

The Pentagon’s own secretive investigation into the incident is understood to have concluded several months ago. There have been reports that senior US commanders had been warned that targeting data used during the war – including for the Minab strike – was dangerously outdated.

The second cited strike, on the same date, targeted a “clearly identifiable sports complex and residential area” in the southern city of Lamerd with a weapon that scattered tungsten pellets.

The UN fact-finding team said in a statement: “Following the United States and Israeli attacks on 28 February, the mission found reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in the loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects.”

Saudi Arabia Just Lost Big in Yemen — Will Trump Intervene?

Trump Says ‘Big Decision’ Coming on Whether to ‘Annihilate’ Iran

President Donald Trump on Thursday said he is weighing whether or not to “annihilate” Iran in a renewed effort to end the illegal 201-day US-Israeli war of choice, musings that came on the heels of a report by United Nations experts who said the United States likely committed war crimes during earlier attacks on the Middle East nation.

“I have a big decision coming up. Do I want to go in and annihilate them, or do I not?” Trump told Axios’ Barak Ravid. “It’s a big decision. Anything could happen with me.”

Ravid said that Trump was referring to the Iranian government. However, the Iranian people have borne the brunt of six-and-a-half months of war and years of deadly economic strangulation.

You already tried massive attacks. They didn't work. What are you going to do? Start mass slaughter of civilians?

— Daniel McAdams (@DanielLMcAdams) September 17, 2026

Trump’s threat came as a United Nations fact-finding mission said there are “reasonable grounds to believe” the United States committed a war crime in two February strikes—one on the Shajareh Tayyebeh School in Minab and another on a sports complex and residential area in Lamerd—that killed a combined total of at least 178 civilians, including 120 children.

The UN experts’ report pointed to the Trump administration’s “deprioritization of civilian harm mitigation and of compliance with [international humanitarian law], expressed through public statements by senior US leadership, including the president and the secretary of defense.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said early in the war that the US would eschew “stupid rules of engagement” meant to protect civilians, while vowing that US forces would rain “death and destruction from the sky all day long.”

Trump has repeatedly expressed his willingness to commit war crimes and atrocities against Iran, including through threats to “completely obliterate” the country’s power, energy and water infrastructure and bomb the nation of over 90 million people “back to the Stone Ages.“

“If they don’t sign the deal, then the whole country is going to get blown up,” the president said in April while unsuccessfully trying to pressure Tehran into an agreement to end the war. He also said that Iran’s “whole civilization will die” if Tehran did not accept his demands.

The UN experts said that while they could not independently verify how many Iranian casualties the US-Israeli war has caused, they have “strong grounds to believe that the true figures for deaths and injuries are significantly higher than the [Iranian] government’s reported toll” earlier this year of over 28,000 people killed and wounded.

Responding to the president’s latest threat, progressive commentator Heather Digby Parton—who blogs under the name Digby—wrote that “this could all be bluster.”

“Trump waving around ‘annihilation’ as if he’s God is still startling to hear,” she added. “But I don’t have the sense that even he believes it anymore. But I would never assume that he won’t. He is, after all, batshit crazy.”

Alastair Crooke: Iran & Yemen's Strikes DEVASTATE Trump, Eilat SHUT – US Oil UNDER SIEGE

Richard Wolff: U.S.-Israel Divorce as U.S. Economy is on the Brink of Collapse

Trump Claims Direct Contact With Iran; Tehran Says No Talks Until Conditions Met

President Donald Trump says the war in Iran may be ending soon as Tehran is begging to make a deal. He added that Iranian and American officials recently had direct contact. An Iranian official said talks between the US and Iran will not resume until Washington complies with the June Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).

Trump was asked by reporters on Wednesday what phase the war against Iran was in. He said, “Well, hopefully we are toward the end of the war. They want to make a deal; we’ll see how that works out. Iran is very much wanting to make a deal.”

In a follow-up, Trump was asked whether he had recently been in direct contact with Iran. He replied, “Directly.”

IRAN LAUNCHES A MASS MOBILIZATION AS TRUMP VOWS TO "WIN" THE WAR – w/ Trita Parsi

‘Drop the Genocide 20’: Activists Launch Campaign to Exclude Officials Behind Biden Gaza Policy From Democratic Politics

As another presidential election approaches and a new Democratic administration may be on the horizon, human rights campaigners are trying to ensure that it won’t be staffed with the same policy officials who architected former President Joe Biden’s Gaza policy.

Most Democratic voters are now appalled by Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which leading human rights groups and scholars have recognized as a genocide. It has led to the deaths of at least 73,000 Palestinians, including more than 21,000 children, according to official totals, and left most of the population displaced and living amongst rubble.

But many of the Biden advisers and appointees who gave cover to Israel during its pivotal, exceptionally deadly early months have settled comfortably back into the respectable liberal intelligentsia, with roles at universities, think tanks, and media outlets.

As 2028 inches closer, a coalition of peace groups is urging these institutions to pledge that they will “drop the Genocide 20,” a group of 20 ex-Biden officials they deemed “responsible for promoting, lying about, and covering up the Gaza genocide,” even as Israeli officials made numerous statements indicating intent to fully destroy Gaza and its people.

Please sign the #DropTheGenocide20 pledge demanding liberal electeds, media and think tanks––and anyone claiming to care about human rights––drop the Biden officials who oversaw, supported and lied about their role in the destruction of Gaza https://t.co/vsW74lRz3X

— DropTheGenocide20 (@dropgenocide20) September 17, 2026

The list, published Thursday on the coalition’s website, includes:

Former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who denied before Congress that Israel was blocking aid to Gaza despite his own State Department’s assessment, a falsehood that allowed him to avoid following a US law that would have required the US to restrict weapons shipments to Israel. (Blinken is now a board member at the Center for American Progress.)

Former National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who said in May 2024 the administration categorically “does not believe” that Israel was committing a genocide. The International Court of Justice had already found a “plausible” genocide risk was present, while the United Nations special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe a genocide was occurring. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, meanwhile, had reported that Israel’s “siege” cutting off humanitarian aid had left more than 1.1 million Palestinians facing “catastrophic” food insecurity and on the brink of famine. (Sullivan is now the Kissinger professor of the practice of statecraft and world order at Harvard’s Kennedy School and a co-host of The Long Game, a national security podcast for Vox.)

Former National Security Council Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa Brett McGurk, who in November 2023 endorsed Israel’s strangling of humanitarian relief as part of a method to secure the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas and later denied a US Agency for International Development (USAID) report of starvation in Northern Gaza after Israel dismissed it. (McGurk is now a global affairs analyst at CNN and a partner at the New York-based venture capital firm Lux Capital.)

Former Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer, who falsely claimed the US was putting “pressure” on Israel to reach a ceasefire and promoted Israel’s false narrative that the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza was a “command and control facility” for Hamas, helping to justify an attack that rendered the territory’s largest medical facility “completely nonfunctional,” according to the World Health Organization. (Finer is now a senior fellow with Yale Law School’s Tsai Leadership Program and co-hosts The Long Game with Sullivan.)

Former White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby, who claimed that the Biden White House had “not seen any indication [Israeli forces] have violated international humanitarian law,” in April 2024, at which point more than 33,000 Palestinians had been killed, and systemic attacks on civilian homes, medical aid workers, and schools had been widely documented.

Former UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who vetoed three ceasefire resolutions brought before the UN Security Council and denied that Israel was blocking aid.

“The purpose of the list is to demand these officials be removed from future Democratic administrations, as well as think tanks and academic and liberal spaces,” said the coalition, which includes Just Foreign Policy; Palestinian Youth Movement; Track AIPAC, which tracks lobbying by pro-Israel donors; Peace Action; the Democratic Socialists of America; and About Face, a group representing anti-war veterans.

John Kirby when pressed on Biden saying it's policy of the Admin to prevent arms transfers that risked humanitarian law violations: "Is killing people delivering food not a violation?"

"No evidence this was deliberate. The State Dept. hasn't found any incident of Israel violating humanitarian law"

— HalalFlow (@halalflow) April 2, 2024

“The culture of bipartisan elite immunity is what drives US war crimes and support for war crimes. From the Vietnam War to post-9/11 torture to the Iraq War, elite war criminality never receives any meaningful sanction from either party. It is treated as a mere policy disagreement among friends,” the coalition said. “This dynamic is a key reason Biden officials knew they could arm, defend, and cover up the genocide in Gaza for 15 months, and simply move back into liberal spaces, nonprofits, and future governments.”

The campaign urged these organizations to oppose any efforts to give the 20 people on the list “institutional or political power that positions them to continue to perpetrate harm.”

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian American lawmaker in the US House of Representatives, has signed the pledge, as has Pennsylvania state Rep. Chris Rabb, who is likely to enter the US House in January after winning the Democratic primary for Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District earlier this year.

Zeteo reporter Prem Thakker, who first broke news of the coalition’s effort, said more lawmakers were expected to join in support.

NEW: Human rights & anti-war orgs launch campaign to demand the top Biden officials who promoted or lied about the Gaza genocide be boxed out from future Democratic admins & other liberal spaces.

Rashida Tlaib & Chris Rabb signed on.
More expected to join.https://t.co/qsY7dkKWqZ

— Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) September 17, 2026

The coalition noted that there were “far more than 20 people in the US government responsible for the US-backed genocide in Gaza” but acknowledged that it needed to limit itself to those most responsible to remain actionable.

It also said that a parallel effort was in the works to hold members of the Trump administration accountable for their own policies in Gaza and elsewhere.

“The Trump administration’s time will come, especially given its attack on Iran and war crimes against the Iranian people,” the coalition said.

But for now, the activists are putting their focus on the Biden administration because “that’s who is currently out of power and actively engaging in reputation laundering and historical revisionism.”

The pledge comes as increasing numbers of Democratic politicians describe Israel’s conduct in Gaza as constituting a genocide, a position shared by the majority of Democratic voters. The coalition said that without consequences, this is meaningless.

“The word ‘genocide’ has certain implications and obligations. It’s not a buzzword,” the coalition said. “If an elected [official] says Israel committed genocide, as 22 members of Congress have, then it logically follows they would agree to not hire, work with, or otherwise validate those most responsible for that which they themselves argue is a genocide. It’s common sense.”

Larry Johnson: BREAKING: WaPo Says U.S. Deaths in Iran War Higher Than Pentagon Disclosed

Trump administration again denies entry visas to Palestinian officials ahead of UN general assembly

The US state department said on Wednesday that it had again denied entry visas to Palestinian officials ahead next week’s United Nations general assembly gathering in New York.

The state department said in a statement the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had “failed to live up to their commitments”, accusing the groups of “taking actions to internationalize the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict including through the International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Court of Justice (ICJ)” and of “glorifying terrorism” among other allegations.

“As a consequence of their failure to reform, contrary to their commitments to the United States, and their ongoing activities that undermine the prospects for peace, the United States will extend sanctions that deny visas to PLO members and PA officials,” the department said.

Among the Palestinian officials barred from entering the US is Mahmoud Abbas, the longtime president of the Palestinian Authority, according to reports. The UN general assembly voted on Thursday to allow Abbas to address the gathering via ⁠video, for the second year in a row.

Diesel Shortages, Ukraine Debt, and a Fed Rate Hike w/ Ray Zucaro

Capitalist vultures with political connections are circling the corpse of Cuba that Rubio is trying to create, ready to consume the scraps and oppress the population ...

Trump and Rubio allies are vying for control of Cuba’s assets if regime falls

Spanish hotel chains. A Canadian mining firm. European shipping giants. Visa and Mastercard. Scores of foreign companies have been driven out of Cuba this summer over fear of being hit with potent, new secondary sanctions. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, told Axios last month there are “no escape valves” from his unprecedented pressure campaign against the island.

But not everybody is losing out. A growing cast of Washington and Florida insiders – from billionaire Trump allies and Rubio-linked lobbyists to Cuban exiles – are jockeying for control of the communist-ruled island-nation’s key assets, charging top dollar to help clients navigate the ever-expanding web of sanctions, and positioning themselves for lucrative business opportunities in the case of regime collapse. Since an executive order signed by Donald Trump on 1 May drove Canada’s Sherritt International from its nickel and cobalt mining joint venture with the Cuban state, two rival US bids to buy out its stake have been presented to US authorities.

Ray Washburne, the vice-chair of Trump’s 2016 Victory Committee who organized last week’s Republican Midterm Convention in Dallas, is clashing with Albert Huddleston, another Texas oil tycoon with close ties to the White House. Both are hoping to swoop in, despite nine-figure claims on Sherritt’s Cuba holdings by Citigroup and Office Depot – Fortune 500 corporations. Washburne did not respond to the Guardian and the consortium group including Huddleston declined to comment.

A similar approach is being pursued by Australia’s Antilles Gold Ltd, which after being blacklisted over its Cuba operations in June received the green light from the Trump administration to negotiate the transfer of its stake in a Cuban copper-gold mine to the New York-based, multibillion-dollar investment fund, Global Emerging Markets.

In July, Madrid-based Vima World SL, a leading player in the island’s food industry which partners with GAESA, the Cuban military conglomerate that controls large swathes of the island’s economy and has become the main target of the US squeeze, hired top Washington lobbying firm Continental Strategy – led by Cuban-American allies of Rubio who oversaw the maximum pressure Cuba policy as officials in the first Trump administration – for matters related to trade, foreign relations and the food industry. Continental’s executives include Carlos Trujillo, Trump’s former ambassador to the Organization of American States John Barsa, Trump’s former acting USAID administrator and Alberto Martinez, Rubio’s former chief of staff. “It’s been interesting to watch how quickly some hardline ideologues become pragmatists once there’s money on the table,” one person familiar with the contract told the Guardian, noting that Continental has taken on other Spanish firms with Cuban business interests “trying to get on the right side of sanctions, like banks and hotel chains”.

[Much more detail in the article. - js]

Judge orders Trump administration to give 30 days’ notice before moving to demolish Kennedy Center

A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to give at least 30 days’ notice before moving to demolish the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after the US president warned that it could be “ripped down”. The US district judge Christopher Cooper issued the order on Thursday after lawyers for the Democratic congresswoman Joyce Beatty submitted evidence of Trump’s comments and sought clarification over whether the building could be closed or bulldozed.

Trump said on Wednesday that his administration deserved recognition for its efforts to renovate the Kennedy Center, including by putting his name on the national arts complex in Washington. “I think that the Trump administration should certainly have recognition because, frankly, if we don’t do that, it’s going to close,” he told reporters in Charlotte, North Carolina. “It’ll end up being ripped down.”

The Kennedy Center was established by Congress as a living memorial to the slain president John F Kennedy and opened in 1971. It has hosted many of the world’s leading performers and run numerous educational programmes. But the centre shut down this week following claims of serious structural deterioration, and its board has voted to close it for up to two years for a $257m renovation.

Matt Floca, the centre’s executive director and chief operating officer, said in a court filing that the building had been closed for at least seven days to assess “acute risks to public safety resulting from continued structural deterioration”.

He said the temporary closure followed an inspection of the roof terrace canopy and a partial ceiling collapse earlier this month, and was separate from the longer-term renovation plans. The administration has said the seven-day closure does not breach an earlier court order restricting its ability to shut the centre.

New lawsuit alleges Epstein possessed ‘child sexual abuse material of countless children’

Jeffrey Epstein’s estate is facing a new lawsuit filed by two women who allege that Epstein possessed child sexual abuse material (CSAM) of them. They want a judge to order that a program be set up to identify and notify all individuals whose “unlawful sexualized images” might have been in Epstein’s collection, and are also seeking monetary damages.

The complaint was filed this week in the US district court for the southern district of New York on behalf of two plaintiffs, who are anonymous in the filing but described as survivors of Epstein’s CSAM crimes. The lawsuit was filed against Epstein’s former lawyer Darren Indyke and Epstein’s former accountant Richard Kahn, who are being sued in their capacities as co-executors of Epstein’s estate. Attorneys for Indyke and Kahn, who have both said that they had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes during their employment, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the complaint on Wednesday.

The complaint claims that for more than two decades, Epstein, who died in a Manhattan jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges, possessed, transported, produced and distributed “child pornography and/or child sexual abuse material of countless children”. It alleges that Epstein “acquired by theft” nude or partly nude images of the first plaintiff, referred to in the document as Jane Doe, and that he transported the material across state lines and retained it.

The lawsuit argues that many of those depicted in the CSAM that they say was possessed by Epstein have never been identified or notified through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s victim-identification program. With regard to the second plaintiff, identified in the complaint under the pseudonym “Amy”, the lawsuit alleges that “upon information and belief, Epstein acquired CSAM images” of her.

The complaint alleges that beginning in the 1990s, Epstein “created and kept” in his locked safe in his New York City home a “‘modeling book’ of sexualized images of children”. It further alleges that beginning in “at least in the 2000s, Epstein had his assistant take nude, sexualized photographs of multiple children, paid them for the images, and then used those photographs for his own sexual gratification and perhaps that of others”.

Ilhan Omar brings bill to make ICE ‘pay the price’ for terrorizing communities

The US congresswoman Ilhan Omar is set to introduce a bill that would make federal immigration agencies “pay the price” for terrorising vulnerable communities, blocking nearly $140bn in funding and redirecting it to local recovery efforts, the Guardian has learned. The Make ICE Pay Act, due to be introduced on Thursday, targets funding previously designated for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) under Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. It would send the money instead to states, local government authorities, non-profit organisations and small businesses left reeling by Trump’s immigration enforcement crackdowns.

“For over a year, ICE has been tearing through our nation, leading racist terror campaigns that have caused devastating damage to our cities, to our businesses and to the lives of our constituents,” said Omar, who represents Minnesota’s fifth congressional district, covering the city of Minneapolis and surrounding suburbs. Beginning last December, thousands of federal immigration agents descended on Minneapolis and surrounding areas, resulting in nearly 4,000 total arrests and the fatal shooting of two US citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The mood of fear and isolation also had a profound effect on commerce.

Omar added: “In Minneapolis, Operation Metro Surge cost our community nearly $700m. We have a moral responsibility to end this abuse of power. Our bill will force ICE to pay the price for the damage they’ve left in their wake and ensure that these devastating operations can never be repeated.” Enforcement actions covered by the bill include Operation Midway Blitz in Illinois, Operations Swamp Sweet and Catahoula Crunch in Louisiana, Operation Catch of the Day in Maine, Operation Charlotte’s Web in North Carolina, and Operation Black Rose in Oregon.

Grants under the scheme could be used to provide economic relief, reimburse operational expenses, assist educational institutions and deliver psychosocial support to affected individuals. The measure also authorises funding for official investigations, commissions of inquiry, record-keeping, truth-telling and memorialisation projects. The scheme would be administered through the office of inspector general of the Department of Housing and Urban Development over three years.

ICE agent arrested in Minneapolis on charges of assault and false reporting of crime

A federal immigration officer wanted on assault charges for shooting and ​wounding a Venezuelan man in Minneapolis was arrested there on Wednesday, eight months after a confrontation that became a flashpoint over ‌Donald Trump’s deportation sweeps. Christian Castro, an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, was taken into custody by agents of the Minnesota bureau of criminal apprehension in Minneapolis and was booked into the Hennepin county jail on his outstanding arrest warrant, the agency said.

Castro had been released on bond from federal custody earlier this month, after an initial appearance in a district court ​in McAllen, Texas, on charges of lying to investigators about the circumstances of the 14 January shooting. Under an agreement with Minnesota law enforcement, ​Castro voluntarily drove to Minneapolis from Texas to turn himself in to state authorities at his attorney’s office but ended ⁠up being arrested minutes before he was due to arrive, the lawyer, Daniel Gerdts, told Reuters.

Rolando Cantu, another lawyer representing the ICE agent, said his ​client always had intended to answer to the charges in Minneapolis. He disputed Hennepin county prosecutors’ assertions that Castro might flee to Mexico, saying: “He wants his ​day in court.” The federal indictment charging Castro with making false statements marked the first justice department prosecution of a federal law enforcement officer accused of wrongdoing arising from the massive Minneapolis ICE deployment dubbed Operation Metro Surge.

Castro already faced state assault charges in Minnesota stemming from the confrontation in which he shot Julio ​Cesar Sosa-Celis, a Venezuelan national, in the leg through the door of the man’s apartment while children were present inside the home. The state charges also include false reporting of ‌a crime ⁠after Castro allegedly told superiors at the Department of Homeland Security that Sosa-Celis and others attacked him with a snow shovel and broom, which was disproved by video evidence.

The DHS has suspended Castro from ICE, and a person familiar with the case has said a civil rights investigation into the Sosa-Celis shooting had been opened. Castro was expected to make his first state court appearance in Minneapolis on Thursday. He will then make ⁠an initial appearance ​in a district court in neighboring St Paul, the state capital, on Friday morning to ​face charges in the federal indictment.

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Nader Rips ‘Feeble, Weak, Cowardly’ Democrats for Eschewing Trump Impeachment

As Democrats campaign for the November midterm elections after helping kill the latest congressional effort to impeach President Donald Trump, progressive consumer advocate and four-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader this week renewed attacks on the party’s leadership for abandoning their constitutional responsibility to hold the president accountable.

In a September 14 essay published by Current Affairs, Nader argued that Democratic leaders have effectively given up on impeachment even as Trump’s second administration faces continuing allegations of executive overreach and misconduct.

“The chronic prevaricator and delusionist Donald J. Trump knows that the worse his outlaw actions become, the less likely the Democrats in Congress are to impeach him,” the Public Citizen co-founder wrote. “The massive number of blatant, impeachable acts by the lawless, corrupt, violent, systemically racist, unstable, dangerous tyrant increases by the day.”

“The American public knows it,” Nader continued. “The majority of Americans favor impeaching Trump. Among Democrats, it’s 84% in favor, as well as a majority of independents. Polling even shows that most Americans think Trump is a ‘dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy.’”

Yet, “when asked about impeachment, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries [D-NY] replied: ‘We haven’t ruled anything in and we haven’t ruled anything out,’” he noted. “What? Every day, the mega-arsonist is burning down our republic and its Constitution, with tens of millions of Americans suffering and endangered. Yet Jeffries has been noncommittal about whether Democrats would pursue impeachment even if they had a congressional majority.”

In a column republished by Common Dreams earlier this month, Nader wrote, “What must Tyrant Trump be thinking about his opponents’ feeble, weak, cowardly responses to his daily torrent of serious, impeachable offenses?”

“Even his egomaniacal narcissism cannot fully explain his amazing good luck,” he opined.

Earlier this week, the House of Representatives voted 232-147 to table an impeachment resolution introduced by Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), effectively ending the measure’s consideration. Eighteen Democrats joined Republicans in voting to table it, while 46 Democrats—including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries—voted “present.”

Green’s resolution accused Trump of high crimes and misdemeanors arising from the administration’s deadly anti-immigrant crackdown, including alleged violations of civil liberties and due process. Green said before the vote that the Constitution contains no provision requiring Congress to wait before confronting impeachable conduct.

Democratic leaders have attempted to justify their decision not to support Green’s resolution by arguing that impeachment requires a substantial investigative record, hearings, witness testimony, and document review. Jeffries, along with Democratic leaders Katherine Clark of Massachusetts—the House minority whip—and Pete Aguilar of California, the House Democratic Caucus chair, said they would vote “present” because “none of that serious work has been done,” as they jointly explained.

Nader rejects that reasoning. In Current Affairs, he argued that saying Democrats “don’t have the votes” misses the purpose of a sustained impeachment campaign, which he described as a way of building public pressure and organizing voters.

“Impeachment is a mobilizer for get-out-the-vote efforts,” he wrote, as well as “for educating and energizing the people back home.”

Trump has already been impeached twice by the House, although the Senate failed to convict him either time. No other president has been impeached multiple times. Nader has pointed out that Trump’s high crimes and misdemeanors are more grave than those for which then-President Nixon resigned from office in 1974 rather than face impeachment, and that Democrats’ fear of the consequences for impeaching Trump again is no excuse for their cowardice.

“The Democrats and electorally frightened Republicans pushed Richard Nixon out in 1974 for far, far lesser transgressions than those committed by Trump in a week,” he wrote.

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Trump officials move to dismantle key protection for US endangered species

More than 1,600 critically imperiled species protected under the US Endangered Species Act (ESA) face losing further federal protections following a new reinterpretation of the 1973 law by the Donald Trump administration. A September 14 memo distributed to Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) field offices by FWS director Brian Nesvik calls for a reinterpretation of what it means to “take” an endangered species. Under the ESA, “take” is defined as “to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct”.

The memo, obtained and shared by the Center for Biological Diversity, reinterprets the law to mean that harming or killing an endangered animal would no longer be considered illegal unless the action was specifically intended to cause harm or death. “A vessel that inadvertently strikes a whale has not taken it, because the vessel’s course was not set against the whale,” the memo said, adding: “Felling a tree is not a take of the bats roosting in it unless the tree is felled for the purpose of killing or capturing them.”

The reinterpretation effectively excludes economic activities such as logging, mining and industrial development from the ESA’s prohibition on “take” when those activities foreseeably kill or injure wildlife without intentionally targeting them. The memo follows the Trump administration’s repeal in July of the ESA’s definition of prohibited “harm,” which was defined as “an act which actually kills or injures wildlife,” including acts that “may include significant habitat modification or degradation”.

Interior secretary Doug Burgum justified the repeal in July by saying: “For years, federal agencies abused the ESA to obstruct lawful land use and burden American families and businesses.”

Earlier this month, 20 states and Washington DC sued the Trump administration over its decision to redefine “harm,” including removing “modification or degradation” of habitat from conduct that can constitute a prohibited take. The memo has drawn swift backlash from environmental advocacy organizations. The Center for Biological Diversity pointed to the supreme court’s 1995 6-3 decision in Babbitt v Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Great Oregon, in which the majority rejected the argument that “take” is limited to actions deliberately directed against endangered species.

Scientists are fighting a longer mosquito season with ... more mosquitoes

The box arrived in the San Gabriel Valley, just east of Los Angeles, filled with more than two dozen paper tubes about the size of toilet paper rolls. Inside each tube were 600 Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, shipped overnight from Kentucky. The plan is to release roughly 30,000 mosquitoes every week, nearly half a million in all. They are all males and male mosquitoes do not bite.

“I tell people it’s the opposite of the human species. It’s the females that cause trouble in the mosquito world,” said Stephen Dobson, a professor and president of MosquitoMate, the Kentucky company breeding the insects. The mosquitoes carry a naturally occurring bacterium called Wolbachia. When these males mate with certain wild females, the resulting eggs do not hatch. “And when they do, those females are then sterile for the rest of their lives,” Dobson said.

The strategy is to flood an area such as a park or neighborhood with male mosquitoes that can mate with wild females but cannot produce viable eggs. “If enough of the females are not producing any offspring then the population goes down,” Dobson said.

Mosquitoes are the world’s deadliest animal, not because of the bite itself but because some species transmit diseases including dengue, West Nile, Zika and yellow fever. Climate Central found that nearly 95% of the US cities it analyzed now have more days each year with temperatures suitable for some of the country’s most common disease-spreading mosquitoes than they did in the early 1970s. The increase averages 18 days a year. That may sound like a small change. For mosquitoes, it can mean several additional weeks to feed, reproduce and potentially spread disease.

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Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some of which defied fair-use abstraction.

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Media Lie About Weapon Transfer To Israel

Defense Minister Says Pakistan Will ‘Fulfill Our Duty’ to Saudi Arabia Amid Attacks from Ansar Allah

AIPAC’s Network Has Already Spent $67.2 Million to Shape the Midterm Elections

YouTube star Ms Rachel to match Macklemore’s $1m Palestine aid donation

Ben Jennings on the collapse of Ed Sheeran’s tour – cartoon

Trump says the US doesn’t need Canada. But it’s the source of key minerals for the military

Sweden’s PM resigns after centre-left bloc wins slim majority in election

Trump arch could have ‘adverse effects’ on nearby monuments but will proceed

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A Little Night Music

Dave Specter - Chicago Style

Dave Specter & Barkin' Bill Smith - Tell Me What's the Reason

Dave Specter & Jorma Kaukonen - How Low Can One Man Go?

Dave Specter - The Hollywood Park Shuffle

Otis Clay with Dave Specter - This Time I'm Gone For Good

Dave Specter - Is What It Is

Dave Specter - Same Old Blues

Floyd McDaniel w/ Dave Specter – Red Top

The Dave Specter Band - Watermelon Man

Jimmy Johnson, Kirk Fletcher & Dave Specter - Dust My Broom

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